An Excellent Year for Books and Booksellers

By Jess Lane / December 31, 2023 at 12:08 am

As 2023 draws to a close we find ourselves looking back fondly on an excellent year for books and bookstores. It is readers like you who bring these books to life, and we hope you’ll take a moment to reminisce with us. Honors have been awarded — to our Book of the Year, Author of the Year, and the winners of our Children’s & YA Book Awards and Discover Prize winner alongside the winners of the Booker Prize, National Book Awards and others. While awards are limited in quantity and scope, this year’s publishing brought an embarrassment of riches.

Voting for our own awards had booksellers passionately advocating for the best books they had read this year — ranging from broad history to a very specific cookbook; from murder mysteries in puzzle form to a caper flick in the guise of historical fiction; from historical fiction that transcends time within a small space to tight stories told in few pages. There simply aren’t enough awards to recognize the great literary gifts we’ve been blessed with. We celebrated the release of the 300th episode of our podcast Poured Over amidst a year full of interviews with literary heavyweights and rising stars, including live recordings in our bookstores in NYC’s Upper West Side and Union Square as well as The Grove in LA. We welcome you to tune in next year for multiple engaging and enlightening episodes released each week.

As language continues to evolve, our literary lexicon too has grown — the descriptive portmanteaus romantasy and spredges have cemented themselves in the vernacular. Swifties and Stans flocked to our Exclusive vinyl selection. Social media drove trends of its own, connecting readers through the shared catharsis of weeping publicly over fictional characters, and lofting authors to unexpected stardom. The unmatched popularity of a certain dragon-based series gave us the opportunity to bring back one of our favorite events — midnight release parties. We hope to see you at the next one!

Among other events worthy of celebration are the dozens of new store grand openings we’ve held in the past year — entering new communities and returning to ones we had sorely missed. We re-launched our membership program including, for the first time, an entirely free element that earns rewards. (Do join if you haven’t already. If you’ve read this far, you read enough to need one. And it’s free!)

We do what we do joyfully, for readers like you who know that a bookstore is a place built for wandering in and finding unexpected wonder. It’s a place to be alone with your thoughts, and to connect with fellow readers. A place to deepen our understanding of ourselves and doorway to innumerable other lives.

So, here’s to another year of wonderful writing, relaxing reading, and blissful browsing. Thank you for making us your bookstore — we’ll see you in 2024.

From our shelves to yours,

The booksellers of Barnes & Noble